Final count for Cortes island's 2024 Chum run

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -The final numbers for Cortes Island's 2024 Chum run are in. Local streamkeepers Cec and Christine Robinson gave a rundown.

Christine Robinson: “I think we all know that this was  a stupendous year for Chums up and down the coast. So not just Cortes, not just Quadra, not just the Sunshine Coast, but from the mainland all the way up to Alaska and down through to Puget Sound and I think possibly further south.  The numbers on Cortes were the highest that we have seen since we've lived on Cortes, which is now 34 years.”

Cec Robinson: “To put it in context, they're probably three times higher than the best years we've ever seen. So it was pretty huge.”

Christine Robinson: “So it was very exciting and the interesting thing was that fisheries did not predict this. They were predicting a very low term return to the coast. They were caught off guard, and everybody probably was.”

“The numbers that we keep are an approximation given that we don't have a fish fence across the creek that counts every fish.  We've had a pretty high degree of accuracy, but there were so many fish that we couldn't count accurately this year. We did several bank walks, and at some point we stopped counting because we couldn’t count - which is always what we hope for.”

“All eight creeks that we have kept an eye on over the years had something to report this year. In Basil Creek, we have about 2,500 Chum.”

Cec Robinson: “At least.”

Christine Robinson: “At least, they were higher up in Basil Creek because as more came in the lower parts of the creek it pushed them higher up. So it extends the spawning area. Squirrel Cove Creek, which is a little creek around the corner of where the Klahoose village is, was a huge surprise. It often has no fish and it often has no water. We figured there were 350 Chum there one day. Another 300 were in Hansen Creek. In James Creek, flowing through the Children's Forest into Carrington Lagoon, there were 220 - which was tremendous. The exciting thing about Whaletown Creek is with the new arch culvert, they all got through easily and they were further up the creek than we have ever seen. There were probably a hundred. For the little Frabjous Day Creek, which flows into Cortes Bay, our best guess is 20. There were probably more, but they weren't counted in the stream so much as in the intertidal area. Manson's Lagoon was the lowest, seven were counted.”

Cortes Currents: Have you heard any explanations as to why there were so many Chum this year?  

Cec Robinson: “I think that the consensus lies with ocean conditions  and so the bottom line would be feed. I'm  not sure why. I know that the  El Nino was backing off and the waters were cooling, which certainly favours more food, but it's only in the last year that  cooling has been taking place. Those fish were relying on the ocean for three and a half years, so I'm not sure that even the El Nino phenomenon explains that, but probably conditions at sea and most likely food.”

Christine Robinson: “ The fisheries people that we talked to would say the oceanic conditions, the food, was so right that they came into the creeks bigger, stronger, healthier than we typically see. That was everybody's observation. That wasn't just us and streamkeepers. Everyone who came to look at the fish that we talked to said, we talked to said,  ‘my gosh, they're big and they're strong. Certainly they're healthier than we've ever seen come in.”